Washington and Lee University
Each year, the Shepherd Poverty Program helps bring speakers to campus of a variety of backgrounds and expertise to supplement the academic study of poverty from an interdisciplinary perspective. By visiting classes and giving public lectures, they endeavor to inform our students about poverty and what can be done to foster human capabilities for communities and individuals who have been left behind in domestic and international development.
David Super, professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law and a leading scholar in the field of anti-poverty law, spoke at the Washington and Lee School of Law on Oct. 19 regarding "The Future o
f Poverty in America: Recession, Health Care Reform and Climate Change." Super's scholarship seeks to reconstruct the intellectual framework for anti-poverty law. He has argued that entitlements are the most efficient and transparent public benefit programs and has also explored "fiscal federalism" to identify features of states' fiscal constitutions that create subtle but strong biases against programs serving low-income people. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, Super served as general counsel to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, one of the nation's premier policy organizations working at the federal and state levels on fiscal policy and public programs that affect low- and moderate-income families and individuals. Super has been a visiting professor at the law schools at Harvard, Yale and Washington and Lee and has taught as a visiting lecturer or adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Howard University Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Princeton University. He graduated from Princeton University magna cum laude and from the Harvard Law School with honors. His visit was sponsored by the Frances Lewis Law Center, the Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty and Human Capability and the University Lectures Fund. Listen to Super's public talk.
Richard B. Freeman, Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University, gave a lecture entitled "Can the U.S. Restore Shared Prosperity After the Financial Meltdown?" at the Washington and Lee University School of
Law on Nov. 9. The lecture touched on the implosion of Wall Street, the weakness of the U.S. capitalist system, trickle-down economics and the shift in income distribution from the middle class to the super-wealthy. As well as holding an esteemed chair in the economics department at Harvard, Freeman currently serves as faculty director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School. He directs the National Bureau of Economic Research/Sloan Science Engineering Workforce Projects and is Senior Research Fellow in Labour Markets at the London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance. He also is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science (AAAS) and currently serves as a member of the AAAS Initiative for Science and Technology. Freeman received the Mincer Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Society of Labor Economics in 2006 and in 2007 was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics. His visit was co-sponsored by the Johnson Lecture Series, Shepherd Poverty Program and the W&L economics department. Listen to Freeman's public talk and view his power point presentation.
Dr. Andrew G. Kumpuris, a 1971 Washington and Lee graduate and currently a clinical cardiologist in Little Rock, Ark., addressed the issue of health care reform during a lecture at Washington and Lee University on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010, under the sponsorship of the Shepherd Poverty Program and the University Lectures Fund. Kumpuris is an adjunct
professor of health policy at the Clinton School of Public Service of Little Rock. The title of his lecture was "Health-Care Reform: Is This THE Fork in the Road?" Over the past several years, Dr. Kumpuris has served as medical director of the CCU and Step-Down Units at St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center in Little Rock, director of cardiology at Doctor's Hospital and director of quality assurance at St. Vincent Medical Center. Dr. Kumpuris is a fellow in the American College of Cardiology, American College of Physicians, The Society of Cardiac Angiography and the American Society of Cardiovascular Interventionists. He has served on the Health Care Advisory Board for former President Bill Clinton's Health Care Reform Task Force and as the chairman of the Governor's Task Force for Health Care Reform in Arkansas. For Governor's Jim Guy Tucker and Mike Huckabee, Dr. Kumpuris chaired the Arkansas State Employee/Public School Personnel Insurance Board. In 2001 and 2002, he moved to Washington where he completed a Health Care Policy Fellowship sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Science). While in Washington, he served as legislative assistant for health policy with Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-VT) and as liaison with the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. In September 2002, he returned to Little Rock where he resumed his practice in clinical cardiology. Dr. Kumpuris currently serves on the Health Policy Board for the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, is an adjunct professor of Health Policy at the Clinton School of Public Service and sits on the state and public school Life and Health Insurance Board at the invitation of the governor of Arkansas. Dr. Kumpuris is an honor graduate from Baylor College of Medicine, where he completed his internship and residency and served as chief medical resident. He finished his cardiology fellowship at Baylor in 1978 and then served as assistant professor of medicine, also at Baylor. He was affiliated with the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. View Dr. Kumpuris' public talk.